Updated 9:04 am, Thursday, September 5, 2013

King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg and then-Sheriff Sue Rahr announce that the suspects in the Carnation killings will be charged with six counts of aggravated first-degree murder.
Photo: Paul Joseph Brown, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg and then-Sheriff Sue Rahr...

From left to right: Ben Anderson, Mary Anderson and King County Sheriff's Office Detective Robin Cleary head to the memorial where flowers and balloons were erected in remembrance of six members of the Anderson family murdered on Christmas Eve 2007 near Carnation.

Photo: Karen Ducey, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

From left to right: Ben Anderson, Mary Anderson and King County...

King County Sheriff John Urquhart -- then a spokesman for the King County Sheriff's Office -- announces that McEnroe and Anderson were captured after six people were found shot to death outside Carnation on Dec. 24, 2007.

Photo: Joshua Trujillo, Seattlepi.com

King County Sheriff John Urquhart -- then a spokesman for the King...

A couple in their 50s, a couple in their 30s, a 6-year-old girl and a 3-year-old boy were found dead at a home in the 1800 block of 346th Avenue Northeast near Carnation on Christmas Eve 2007.(KOMO/4)

A couple in their 50s, a couple in their 30s, a 6-year-old girl and...

Joseph Thomas McEnroe, 29, a suspect in the Carnation murders, is brought into the King County Jail in Seattle.
Photo: Scott Eklund, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Joseph McEnroe is led into Judge Cheryl Carey's courtroom in King County Courthouse to face arraignment in the murders of six people in Carnation on Christmas Eve 2007. He entered a not-guilty plea.
Photo: Paul Joseph Brown, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Joseph McEnroe is led into Judge Cheryl Carey's courtroom in King...

Michele Anderson leaves the courtroom following a hearing at the King County Courthouse. Anderson and Joseph McEnroe are both accused of killing Anderson's parents as well as her brother and sister-in-law, their 5-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son in Carnation, Wash.
Photo: Dan DeLong, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Michele Anderson leaves the courtroom following a hearing at the...

Joseph Thomas McEnroe, 29, a suspect in the Carnation murders, is seen at his bail hearing at the King County Jail in Seattle on Thursday. A court order prohibited publication of the photo until Friday.
Photo: Dan DeLong, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

The state Supreme Court unanimously ruled Thursday that a Carnation couple accused of killing four adults and two children on Christmas Eve should face the possibility of execution.

Reversing a King County Superior Court decision, the high court found Prosecutor Dan Satterberg did not err in asking that alleged killers Joseph McEnroe and Michelle Anderson be put to death. A jury will have the final say in the matter when the couple is ultimately brought to trial in the deaths of six of Anderson’s relatives.

At issue was Satterberg’s decision to seek a death sentence against Anderson and McEnroe, which he made after considering information provided by defense attorneys in the case. The defense faulted the prosecutor for taking a wide view of the evidence available; on Thursday, the Supreme Court agreed with Satterberg.

“Holistic assessments that take into account various mitigating circumstances, the facts of the case, and the strength of evidence are just the type of individualized determinations we require of our prosecutors,” Justice Charles Wiggins wrote for the unanimous court. “Without a flexible weighing of various factors, prosecutors likely would make standardless decisions that violate equal protection principles.”

The Supreme Court is currently reviewing a similar decision in the case of King County’s other current death penalty defendant, accused cop killer Christopher Monfort.

Alleged to have killed Seattle Police Officer Timothy Brenton in an October 2009 ambush that saw another officer seriously injured, Monfort has been charged with aggravated first-degree murder. Satterberg asked that a jury be allowed to consider execution when sentencing Monfort; in February, Superior Court Judge Ronald Kessler threw out Satterberg’s request, claiming the prosecutor failed to consider mitigating materials.

A decision from the high court is expected in coming weeks on the matter.

Prosecutors filed an appeal days after Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Ramsdell ruled Satterberg wrongly considered the strength of the evidence against the accused killers when he opted to seek a death sentence in the December 2007 slayings.

Ramsdell ruled Thursday that the Satterberg "erred as a matter of law in considering the strength of the evidence on the issue of guilt against" McEnroe and Anderson.

In doing so, Ramsdell essentially overruled Satterberg's decision to ask a jury to put both to death for killing six members of Anderson's family. Ramsdell's decision followed more than five years of litigation in the case, which has been subjected to series of delays. McEnroe and Anderson, charged three days after the slayings, had been slated to face a jury later in 2013.

According to prosecutors, Anderson and McEnroe gunned down Anderson's parents, her brother and sister-in-law and that couple's two children, aged 6 and 3. Each faces six counts of aggravated murder, the only crime in the state that can carry a death sentence.

Anderson and McEnroe first killed Anderson's parents, Wayne and Judy, at their Carnation home, prosecutors argue. They are alleged to have then turned their guns on 6-year-old Olivia Anderson and her brother, Nathan, 3. They were shot to death alongside their parents, Scott Anderson and Erica Mantle Anderson, as all four arrived for a Christmas Eve celebration.

Shortly after the killings, Anderson told police she felt slighted by her parents, on whose property she and McEnroe were living when the shooting occurred, according to prosecutors' statements. Police say both admitted to the killings shortly after being arrested at the crime scene the day the bodies were discovered.

Since Satterberg announced he would seek execution in the case in October 2008, defense attorneys for Anderson and McEnroe have fought vigorously to have capital punishment moved off the table.

Attorneys for Anderson have argued that she is mentally ill and should not face a death sentence, despite her protests to the contrary. In letters sent from jail, Anderson initially expressed a desire to be put to death, seeing her execution as a way to make right her wrong; her attorneys later said she no longer holds that view.

First offering mitigating evidence in an attempt to sway Satterberg from seeking a death sentence, the attorneys in recent months have argued that the state capital punishment system is flawed to the point of unconstitutionality.

Defense attorneys for the former couple had previously unsuccessfully sought to have the death sentence taken off the table. They previously made similar arguments that the death penalty is being used unevenly in Washington.

Such arguments – that executing some killers and sparing others without an enforced standard amounts to un-Constitutional punishment – won over the U.S. Supreme Court when it briefly abolished capital punishment in the mid-1970s. Prosecutors in Washington contend standards adopted by the state when it reinstituted the death penalty had largely resolved the issue. Defense attorneys in capital cases – including Anderson and McEnroe's – often argue death sentences are not sought equitably for a number of reasons, and that prosecutors are not held to a reasonable standard when deciding who they'll seek to execute.

Opposing Ramsdell’s ruling, Senior Deputy Prosecutors Andrea Vitalich and James Whisman argued another constitutional concern -- the separation of powers -- prevents Ramsdell from second-guessing the elected prosecutor's decision to seek a death sentence.

"The Washington Supreme Court has held repeatedly that the prosecutor's exercise of discretion in deciding whether to seek the death penalty is similar to his or her exercise of discretion in deciding whether to charge a defendant with a crime," the prosecutors said in the appeal.

"In this case," they continued, "the trial court overturned the equivalent of a charging decision based on the prosecutor's consideration of the available evidence – the most fundamental consideration driving any charging decision in any case, capital or otherwise. As such, the trial court's ruling impermissibly infringes on an executive function on wholly untenable grounds."

Vitalich and Whisman went on to argue Ramsdell ignored precedent that supports their position in issuing his decision.

Anderson and McEnroe remain jailed pending trial in the matter. Each has been charged with aggravated first-degree murder; they face either execution or life in prison without parole if convicted as charged.